Page 88 of Pyre

Then the screaming started.

It spread like wildfire—people gasping, clutching their stomachs, collapsing where they stood. Phones shot up, camerasrolling, livestreams starting. The music cut off, confusion sweeping through the crowd before panic took hold.

Ruby stood in the middle of the fairgrounds, watched it unfold, a twisted grin curling her lips.

This could not be undone.

No more cover-ups. No more pretending.

IN ONLY Aweek, the world had changed.

The government had no choice but to come forward. The Thermophile Control Agency, the bacteria, the cure—every secret unraveled under the weight of undeniable evidence.

Press conferences played on repeat. Officials scrambled to contain the outrage. Hospitals were flooded.

The newly infected would recover. Their bodies hadn’t adapted yet. A quick dose of the cure, and they were fine.

But the old ones? The ones who had lived with the bacteria for years? Their bodies no longer knew how to function without it. The cure had to be administered in careful doses, then monitored for signs of organ failure. Too much, too fast, and it would kill them.

Some didn’t survive either way.

Risk of exposure meant no transplants could be made, no surgeries conducted without ensuring the cure removed all the bacteria. If an organ failed, they died. Their immune systems were shot after the cure, so if even the newest of thermophiles caught a cold or stomach bug, they died.

The music festival wasn’t the only hit. Dozens of high attendance places, a few sporting events, an opening of a new mall, a presidential candidate’s rally, all had thermophiles with canisters, infecting under a million Americans over a period of 24 hours. Not all had the bacteria immediately activate. Some locations had no phlogiston, not like the music festival did. Ruby wanted the citizens to fear they had been infected, to get exposedin the future. She ensured the panic would last for days, weeks, maybe longer.

Protests erupted in every major city. The TCA, once operating in the shadows, now had nowhere to hide. Their labs were raided, their research exposed.

She watched it all unfold from a motel room, Jonah and Lucas by her side, the flickering TV casting pale light over their faces.

She had done what she set out to do.

The world knew the truth.

And it would never be the same.